15 July 1998
After that we drove along the Romantic Road, a highway
that passes the oldest and best-preserved castles in south central Germany. It
was a very pleasant drive. We started seeing a lot of the old style of
house-barn combinations. They looked very large, as well as being about 3
stories high, with the house and barn being connected and usually at right
angles to each other. I admit it would be very nice to go to the barn in the
winter or at night without having to go outside, but it still seemed strange.

One of the castles we passed was
built up on the narrowest part of a hill, more like a pass. When the highway
was built, they tunneled under the pass, directly under the castle. It was a
big one, too.

All houses in the village are inside the city limits, we kept
seeing these yellow speed limit signs, that's right - the top is for a car and
the bottom for a tank!

In northern Germany there
are now lots of windmills of the type used to generate electricity. We saw
many communities with three windmills near small villages. The villages would
be full of houses built right up to the town limits, but no further. It
looked strange to see such definite limits to the towns. Most houses
looked large, in addition to being 2 or 3 stories high.

27 July 1998

On the way to Denmark, we had
stopped at Flensburg to locate the church, so we would have no trouble finding
it on Sunday morning. We found the general area on the city map beside the
road, however we couldnít find those roads. After coming back from Denmark, I
saw it sitting near the freeway. There was no freeway exit there, so we took
the next one and wound our way back. That made it easier, or should I say
possible, to find on Sunday morning. George was asked to speak in church that
Sunday. Dad had warned him that he would probably be asked to speak. After we
left church, we went to get on the freeway to head south, and next thing we
know, we were stopped at the Danish border, headed north. We finally got turned
around again and headed south through Hamburg. I thought we would be crossing a
bridge over a major river, and I was looking forward to seeing some of the
shipping there. Instead it was a tunnel under the river, so we didnít get to
see anything. I didnít think the tunnel was nearly as deep as the ones in
Virginia.

On our way back down to
Dusseldorf, we stopped at a MacDonaldís in a tiny little village by the
freeway. All of the MacDonaldís in Europe were big and busy, but this one had
the biggest parking lot youíve ever seen at a MacDonaldís. We got one of the
last empty parking spaces and it was 3 aisles away from the restaurant.
Europeans love fries, which they never call French, but they prefer them with
mayonnaise. That was about the only place that would put ice in your drink
(just enough to float on top), so we went to MacDonaldís often. They often
didnít speak English, but fortunately Big Mac, fries, and sprite sound the same
in any language.

This wonít be a complete record
without a word about toilets. We saw every kind imaginable and then some. I
didnít see a single one with a lever flush like those in the US. There were a
number with push buttons, on the floor, on the wall, on the side of the tank, on
the top of the tank, in the top of the tank. There were places you had to scrub
before you dare sit, places you didnít dare sit, places with pull chains,
port-o-potties, even one that washed itself. Half of them you had to pay,
usually the equivalent of a quarter. The places you paid were usually cleaner.
It seemed to me that would not be enough money to do much more than pay the
salary of the attendant. I wondered if it was just a way to create a few more
jobs.

We found the best way to get money
was by credit card. We could withdraw cash directly from our account into
foreign currency with no fees. Using Visa credit cards wherever they were
accepted was another good thing to do.

We arrived in Dusseldorf about
noon before our plane left the next morning, so we drove over to the airport
that afternoon. We wanted to find where to return the rental car and which
terminal to go to while we had plenty of time. That made it easy the next
morning. We had to find the government offices at the airport where you can get
back some of the taxes you pay on major purchases. The European Union charges
16% Value Added Tax, and that is the part you can get back, but only on large
purchases. We were surprised to get the same seats coming home that we had
going. There were too many clouds most of the way to see much out the windows.
There was another long line to get through customs. Basically the trip home was
uneventful. Only Trey was at the airport to meet us.